“As more things are valued in terms of information, while being “free” in terms of money, at some point it becomes misleading to evaluate the wealth of individuals and corporations in terms of the number of dollars or pesos they possess. A person or corporation with little money in the bank but a huge data bank of information could be the wealthiest, or most powerful, entity in the country. In theory, it might be possible to quantify the value of their information in monetary terms, but they never actually convert the information into dollars or pesos. Why do they need dollars, if they can get what they want with information?

This has far-reaching implications for taxation. Taxes aim to redistribute wealth. They take a cut from the wealthiest individuals and corporations, in order to provide for everyone. However, a tax system that knows how to tax only money will soon become outdated as many transactions no longer involve money. In a data-based economy, where value is stored as data rather than as dollars, taxing only money distorts the economic and political picture. Some of the wealthiest entities in the country may pay zero taxes, because their wealth consists of petabits of data rather than billions of dollars.”